One of the really hot topics which you see a lot of people talking about with regard to distilled water is acidity. The theory goes that because distilled water is very mildly acidic it can leach minerals from the body. There is also a competing theory that slightly different theory that the acidity of distilled water makes the body ultimately more alkaline. And there are many advocates of drinking alkaline water. Anyway, let’s now examine the scientific basis for this.

What is the PH of distilled water?

Distilled water at the moment of distillation is pH7 which is neutral. Then, after a relatively short time a very small amount of the distilled water will bond with atmospheric carbon dioxide to make a very small amount of carbonic acid, much less than you would get with a carbonated drink for example but enough to push distilled water to pH6. That is about the same as most fish meat, asparagus, butter, olives or a curry. With the pH scale lower is more acidic and it is also logarithmic. What that means is that ph6 is 10x more acidic than pH7, ph5 is 100x more acidic than pH7, pH4 is 1000x more acidic than pH7, etc. Something really acidic like Coca Cola (and most fizzy drinks) is pH 2.5. Your stomach acid is pH1.5 to 3.5. The acidity of a car battery is about pH0.7 - 1.0. So you can see, yes distilled water is technically acidic, but really not by very much. Now what happens in your gut?

When you swallow anything it triggers the release of hydrochloric acid into the stomach and part of the job of that acid is to kill off any bugs that might be in your food. Next stop after the stomach is the duodenum and at this stage lots of bicarbonate gets released into the food to neutralise the pH and from then on the food gets absorbed during its passage through your intestines.

People have two main worries:

First, they worry that drinking distilled water will make their stomach contents more acidic. Let’s think about this, when you pour a very weak acid (distilled water) into a very strong acid (stomach) you end up with a diluted (less acidic) mixture. To make your stomach more acidic you would need to be consuming something more acidic than the stomach contents. Drinking distilled water is never going to make your stomach contents more acidic, it will only ever make it less acidic.

Secondly, people worry that drinking distilled water will somehow make their bloodstream more acidic and that this will leach minerals from their bodies. Drinking distilled water is not going to make your bloodstream more acidic. After the water has been mixed with the incredibly strong acid in your stomach and then mixed with the alkalising effect of the bicarbonate, any latent acidity that might have existed in the distilled water will have been completely wiped out.

The whole leaching minerals argument is an example of what psychologists call truthiness; it kind of sounds like it could be true so people believe it. In reality it is non-science.

Your body works extremely hard to keep your blood pH between 7.35 and 7.45. If it goes outside that range then your enzymes start to denature and you need to go to hospital (in an ambulance). Even people who are slightly out of range like pH7.25 can be very ill indeed. For your blood to be acidic enough to actually start dissolving minerals it would have to be well below pH6 and you would definitely be long dead by then. In addition minerals are held in bone in a complex organic molecule called hypoxyapetite, it's a combination of Vitamin D and Calcium, you need enzymes to get the Calcium out - not acid.

The idea of acidic water sounds scary but it does not harm you, if it could, rainwater would harm you and most foods would harm you. There is nothing harmful about drinking distilled water. And if you are at all worried about it being mildly acidic then you can always add a pinch of Sodium Bicarbonate to rebalance the pH.

How to make distilled water more alkaline?

You can make your distilled water more alkaline by adding say Sodium Bicarbonate to it. Alkaline water has a higher pH (above pH7). Some people claim that drinking alkaline water can help prevent disease, such as cancer and heart disease. However, there isn't enough research to verify these claims and there is no evidence that alkaline water is better than any other type of water. There are suggestions of potential risks from alkaline water. In a study, baby rats given alkaline water showed impaired growth and damage to cardiac muscle. Additionally, a case report released in 2015 said that when a municipal water plant in a town in Germany accidentally increased the water’s pH to 12, skin burns ensued.

Written by William Fryer - MA Oxon

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A lot of gym enthusiasts and people who exercise in any way whether it is running, walking, through sport at many different levels don't realise how essential it is to keep your body hydrated.

As we exercise we sweat which in regular terms means we lose water through exercise. We are as human beings made up of nearly 66% water and this fact sometimes can be lost. Water is what our body needs to live, without it we cease to live within a few days to a week. When we excercise this need for this precious element increases tenfold as we are increasing our need to rehydrate.

From a scientific point of view the human body relies heavily on water in order to complete vital body functions such as controlling of your temperature, helping your metabolism and ensuring good general blood circulation. Dehydration can cause very adverse effects to someone be they physical or mental ailments, which if you are exercising physically, can be very dangerous and can cause injury. Dehydration often comes on very fast and hits a person suddenly. If you are feeling tired, dizzy, hungry or have a lack of energy, these can all be signs that you are not drinking enough water and certainly should not be exercising if you are feeling any of these effects. Water is also great for exercise as it has zero calories and a lot of people working out look to lose weight as part of their exercise regime.

Here are some useful tips on how to stay hydrated during exercise:

• Pre-hydrate. If you are exercising in the morning, afternoon or evening it is good practice to have some water maybe 3-4 hours before your work out, that way by the time you are exercising you will be nicely hydrated and feel good before you start your workout.

• Avoid caffeine. Caffeine comes in a lot of everyday forms that people rely on like coffee and energy drinks. It also can contain many calories depending on what it is in and is best avoided during exercise.

• They say for every pound you lose during exercise, it is best to drink at least three glasses of water to rehydrate.

• Always consult with a registered doctor before you undertake any new intense exercise regimes. When speaking to your doctor also ask for advice on hydration that is tailored to you, (e.g. your weight, height, BMI, blood pressure, etc).

• Invest in a good quality water distiller. Water distillers are vital to get 100% pure water and when you are drinking water that has come from a good distiller, whether it is before, during or after exercise, you will feel much better and over time should help you with your exercise targets.

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There has been much excitement at the recent discovery of water on Mars. Finding water was one of NASA’s Martian probe Curiosity’s chief tasks. Water is considered by scientists to be the crucial building block of life – if there’s water on Mars, there may once have been Martians.

We all need water to stay alive. Here are some facts about the most important substance on our planet.

1 – If we know one chemical formula, it’s likely to be that for water, H20. The H stands for hydrogen and the O for oxygen, two gases, which when combined at a ratio of two hydrogen atoms to one oxygen atom give us water.

2 – We generally think of water as a liquid, but it can also exist as a gas and a solid. Solid water is of course, ice, and the steam that comes out of our kettles is water as a gas, steam.

3 – Water defines our temperature scales. It boils at 100 centigrade and freezes at zero centigrade. The Fahrenheit scale was also designed around water. Its zero was the freezing point of salt water and there were 180 degrees between pure water’s freezing and boiling points.

4 – We can control these though. Add impurities to water and its boiling point will rise and freezing point lower, that’s how antifreeze in our car engines works.

5 – Atmospheric pressure also changes the properties of water. The higher in the atmosphere you go – reducing the pressure – the lower the boiling point of water. At the top of Mount Everest, the boiling point of water is 68 centigrade; in the deepest oceans, water stays liquid well beyond its notional 100 degrees boiling point.

6 – Our planet is a watery world. Around 70% of the surface of the Earth is water, most of it – around 70% - in salty oceans that we cannot drink. The total amount of water on the planet is somewhere in the region of 326 million cubic miles.

7 – Seawater contains 35 grams of salt in each kilo of water on average.

8 – Water is the best solvent on the planet; scientists call it the universal solvent, because so many solids can be dissolved in it.

9 – All the water on earth is millions of years old. The planet is a closed system, nothing new arrives and very little leaves our atmosphere.

10 – Water cycles endlessly through this system. Evaporating into the atmosphere where it forms clouds and, when the conditions are right, rain or snow.

11 – Pure water is tasteless and odourless. It’s very rare to encounter pure water; the stuff that comes out of our taps is harmless but not pure, unless you distil it.

12 – Water is neither acidic nor alkaline. The pH scale of acidity is another that is based around water, which has a neutral pH of seven.

13 – We too are mostly water. Adults are around 70% water and a new born around 80%. Our cells are mostly water; things like DNA are dissolved in water.

14 – There is much debate about how much water we should drink, but drinking more than three gallons-a-day is likely to make you very ill. Around eight cups or 2 litres is the most common recommended daily intake. There are water distillers on the market to purify water if you are worried about its quality.

15 – This overdosing on water causes what is called ‘water intoxication’ when the level of fluid dilutes sodium in the blood and floods the brain.

16 – Most of the things we drink, from tea to soft drinks, still contain large amounts of water. The same is true of our food.

17 – Most of the world’s fresh water is underground.

18 – The United States of America consumes 346,000 million gallons of water a day, 80% of it in agricultural and energy generation uses.

19 – The vast majority of water we each use each day is flushed away down the drains.

20 – Thirst – our body’s signal to take on water - only hits us after we’ve lost more than 1% of the water in our body.

21 – Losing weight very quickly through exercise is often the result of shedding water rather than fat. That takes rather longer.

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For the past decade or so the food industry has been talking a lot about organic foods. Organic is seen as the holy grail in healthy and safe foods. Organic fertilisers and pesticides are used, very little or no artificial chemicals are used in the production of the food. Supposedly the food tastes better and many argue that it is healthier. Organic is a bit of a “weasel word” though. If you remember your GCSE English you might recall talking about words that give one impression but actually mean something else. They might be words with a lot of emotional attachment to them, they might be words that have had a lot of marketing money behind them, or they might be jargon used to confuse and inflame passion. There has been a lot of campaigning behind the word organic, and for the food industry there has been a lot of marketing. The reality is though that there is an innumerable number of natural and organic products that are extremely dangerous to your health. The food industry might have solid arguments for organic carrots but not everything organic is good for you, some are actually dangerous.

Volatile organic compounds are something that is mostly studied by science. They are organic, but they are also dangerous. They are considered volatile because they turn to their vaporised or gaseous form quite easily. They are regularly checked for in most water plants, and ensuring their levels are low in the water supply is one of the main functions of the chemists at these plants. Sewage is even checked to ensure it does not contaminate other areas of the water supply.

Volatile organic compounds are chemicals that come from things like cleaning solvents and fuel, they are natural, they come from the earth but they are still dangerous. While they are checked for at the water plant and checks are carried out randomly around areas leading from the water plant the sad situation is that the water network does not have complete structural integrity. Every winter new leaks and burst pipes are found, damage is caused by freezing water and supplies are cut. What this means is that fuels and cleaning chemicals containing volatile organic compound can find their way into the water supply. If they are found in large quantities in a water supply it calls for an immediate investigation and can even result in the water supply being cut off until the problem is fixed. A serious incident would create a national scandal.

The problem is that the water supply cannot be checked at every output, there will always be places that go a long time without checks and there are places where the pipes will be particularly badly damaged. This could mean that these compounds do not present a wide threat needing immediate action, instead only affecting a few houses or a small area.

The research on volatile organic compounds has not progressed to knowing exactly what problems they cause. What is known is that build ups of these compounds in your body can cause heart problems, neurological problems and even birth defects in children. If you are worried about this it is worth investigating the methods available to clean the water such as charcoal water cleaners and water distillers.

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Whoever finds the secret of guaranteed weight loss will have answered the prayers of millions who struggle to shed weight. There probably is no single solution for everyone, but some very simple changes to lifestyle are proven to help – including the simplest of them all, drinking water.

Research published in the Journal of the American Dietetic Association in 2008 and 2010 provided the first scientific evidence that water could help with weight loss.

The study that found this was carried out on older people, but there may be a lesson in it for us all.

Scientists working with a group of overweight people aged between 55 and 75 divided the group into two, half of whom drank two cups of water (around 500ml) before each meal. This group were found to have lost more – a whole 5 pounds more – weight than the non water-drinking group, both of whom followed the same diet.

And the results seemed to last too. Twelve months after the initial three-month dieting period, the water drinkers, most of who kept up the habit, had maintained their weight loss.

The reason is simple, and it’s all down to the timing. The water was consumed half-an-hour before meals, initially breakfast then all three meals. There was no restriction placed on the amount of food any participant in the experiment was allowed to eat, but the water intake was consistent.

Why could water assist weight loss? It may be that water makes us feel fuller, it may be that it boosts the fat-burning rate of metabolism or simply that replacing unhealthier sugary drinks with something calorie free is enough to have an effect.

Let’s look at some other reasons why water can be your weight loss secret weapon.

Drinking water when we are losing weight is important. When we first start to lose weight we shed excess water, rather than fat, first, and it is possible to become dehydrated. Drinking plenty of water will mean you won’t register a false positive early in your weight loss plan.

Hunger is a tricky customer. Sometimes a craving for food can be satisfied with drink. Water fills us up and has no calories. Drinking water regularly and particularly before we eat or when we crave a snack can help cut down on the amount we eat.

Bring water into your social life too. Alcohol in anything other than the smallest amounts is not good for us and it is also packed with calories. Take a drink of water between each alcoholic drink and you will take fewer calories on board and you are much less likely to get a hangover if you overindulge too.

Our bodies need water to function. Without it we die. Dehydration brings on headaches, low blood pressure and even fainting fits. Think of water as the lubricant your body needs to work, if you get the right amount everything functions more efficiently. That includes your metabolism, the rate at which we use up the calories (and fat) we take on from our food. More water means more fat burned.

Staying in good health while losing weight is important. If you are exercising – and it is a good idea if you want to lose weight – it will help keep your joints in good order. With more water, you will be able to exercise for longer. As we use up calories, we produce toxins, which our body doesn’t need, and which can be harmful; we need water to flush these out of our system.

Finally, water is better way to hydrate ourselves than almost anything else available is. No calories, no sugar, no fat. When you reach for a soft drink or glass of juice, you are drinking things that will only add weight. Replace them with water.

Purchasing endless amounts of bottled water will eat into your finances and is not environmentally friendly. Think about investing in a water distiller which will help you in your weight loss quest as well as being much more environmentally and economically friendly.

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